History doesn’t repeat itself, but in Coburg you could get the feeling that the groundhog may not say hello there every day, but that it is in constant use. In any case, the mayors on duty at the moment must get this impression, who in Coburg are traditionally confronted by the SPD and are always confronted with the same phenomenon: a factotum that is engaging, eloquent and charming in their dealings can – but not necessarily be got to. Sometimes even not at all.
Norbert Kastner took over as head of town hall in 1990, he was only 30 years old and at the time the youngest German mayor ever. You can look back on a long time of design and look for contemporaries at your side. The picture with Brose entrepreneur Michael Stoschek at a rally, the politician in the passenger seat and the entrepreneur at the steering wheel, has become legendary. A male friendship, as they say.
She shouldn’t hold it. A sign on a roundabout, the Zoff about renaming a street, a concept for the design of the city center – historians will have to work through exactly what it was that drove the wedge between the alpha males. In the end, Stoschek did everything in his power to get Kastner out of office. And failed.
After Kastner did not take up office in 2014, his successor Norbert Tessmer (SPD) created a major goal, so to speak, across departments: pacifying the local feud. People were willing to do a great deal for it, and a street was even named after NSDAP member Max Brose. Tessmer was not granted the privilege of forging an everlasting peace. The city’s gold ring of honor? Stoschek handed it back.
The next SPD man is currently in office (but that’s probably not the reason for the feud: Stoschek left the CSU in 2021). And for this Wednesday Mayor Dominik Sauerteig has convened a special city council meeting to clear up allegations that Coburg is wasting tax money. It’s about the design of the outdoor facilities of the Globe Theater – also co-financed by Brose – which Stoschek once described as his “child”. His protest emails, someone from City Hall claims, are currently blocking “large sections of the building department.” Is that true? Hard to say. But you could imagine it.